Scrubs/Headscratchers

Scrubs

• Turk and Carla want JD to move out of the apartment, and make it seem it's his obligation to. Why? JD found the apartment and was there before Carla! Pfft!
  • Maybe they agreed to help him find and/or pay the deposit on a new place?
  • Consider that Carla can be quite the control freak. To her, JD's presence was a problem in her and Turk's relationship, and it seemed logical to have the "problem element" move out (and JD wasn't too thrilled with it to begin with). Though later both Mr. and Mrs. Turk recant their decision and take Dorian back in (though he later moves out of his own accord).
  • Yeah but she never considers getting another apartment with Turk and it's ok when they got married but she was just his girlfriend, it's rather rude to throw someone out of their apartment for a relationship that could had ended in months.
• Turk and Carla's wedding JBM, why is Marco a groomsman? Turk doesn't even like Marco and there was a ton of other people who could have done it; he has two brothers, a ton of surgical workmates, JD and Turks super successful friend from College, so why Marco?
  • A lot of couples do things like that at their weddings when they don't really want to, as a way of keeping the peace between the families. It's a gesture. It can even be convenient, because it eliminates the need to delineate your circle of actual friends into a group that's close enough to be in the wedding party and a group that just gets to come.
  • More importantly, why isn't Turk's brother a groomsman? It was a big plot point in an earlier episode about J.D. having to share being best man with Turk's brother.
    • Well Turk's brother originally couldn't make it due to business commitments, which is why Turk asked him to be his best man to begin with. sure at some point he said he actually could make it, but it's easy to just assume that after that his business stuff changed again and he couldn't get there.

• Why are JD and Elliott hooking up again? I thought we were promised their UST was over and done with at the end of Season 3!
  • Burn the Blasphemer!
    • You believed them? Come on, it was a linchpin of the show and we all knew they would get together at the end.
    • Yeah, there was no way they wouldn't get together. Please...
  • OK, they're together now. I'm cool with that. But it really needs to be the end of this particular story arc.
    • It's actually very deftly handled, completely subverting the Ross/Rachel and Niles/Daphne-type precedents.
    • It has to be the end of the story arc, Zach Braff is leaving the show at the end of the season.
• Really. By now JD should have figured out that he may hold a woman in positive regard without thinking it means he wants to stick parts of himself in her. Of course that's a mystery to most people in television. . .
  • Carla doesn't count? She's probably the only female cast member he hasn't knocked boots with to some degree.
    • She's JD's surrogate mother, so no, I don't think she counts.
  • Could also be some Truth in Television here, as this troper knows a few men who can't seem to have female friends without sex getting involved somehow.
• Carla and Turk's relationship is really hard to justify. She's controlling and condescending, he's childish and inconsiderate. One episode even says that Turk's replicating his relationship with his mother (even when he's Chief of Surgery and she's still a nurse, you get the impression she'll still dominate every aspect of the relationship) but then decides to forget about it. Carla once decides that she won't have sex until marriage, and later gets upset and decides she needs sex. Both times, Turk assents and never complains about how badly Mom- er, Carla is treating him.
  • To each his own, I suppose. It seemed to me that the two of them complemented each other perfectly. Carla likes to be in control, and Turk needs somebody to tell him what to do. She's extremely maternal, and he's childish. It's probably not a very healthy relationship, but they seem to get by happily.

• Why does J.D know things when narrating that he doesn't know as an ordinary character? In one episode he says 'I wasn't the only one lying around here', ostensibly in reference to Carla losing Rowdy, even though he didn't find out that had happened until season six. And in 'My Chopped Liver' he seems to know about Turk's frustration at the fact that J.D has ruined 'Turk Night' even though the entire point of that plot was for Turk to come to the realization that he should just not say anything about it.
  • Maybe the "J.D." that does the narration is different than the "J.D." character. Remember the "His Story", "Her Story", "Their Stories" episodes, the ability to narrate can be passed from person to person. Maybe the "Narrator" is actually an entity or a special power that operates in the carrier's subconscious. But now I'm just Wild Mass Guessing.
    • I think the narration voice is in retrospect, the narrating JD is recalling the incident.
      • In 'My Hero' the narration is revealed to be at least partly what J.D has written in his diary. But that doesn't really fix anything.
        • Most of the things he says are just vague enough to work. For example, when he says "everyone lies around here," he could be referencing something totally different, but because that's the way the SHOW works, the CAMERA shows us Carla's story.
      • On a number of occasions, it seems that his inner monologue is somehow distinct from his consciousness, which, I believe, is actually a sign of severe schizophrenia.
        • They did once plan to have the Janitor turn out to be a figment of JD's imagination if the pilot ended up tanking...
          • I was under the impression his inner monologue was actually a transcription of his diary entries? He could be writing in his diary/journal about something that happened long ago, and just have a weird quirk about writing in a near-present tense style.
      • That is were the show parts from reality, at times people are just on the same broad situation as him, but at times he goes into specific terms that don't relate to him, like saying there are lot of reasons to lie, fear, wanted to protect someone, pride etc. but only one of those relates to him, so in normal circumstances he wouldn't had talked about them, and everything else is just the coincidence that other people are experiencing something similar and the camera just takes the opportunity. At the end it's still a show, we can't really expect for everyone to realize, admit or solve their problems at the same time so often, unless all of their periods are in that level of synch.
• Has anyone ever been in a hospital where more than a handful of personnel wear their ID badges photo side out? And has anyone ever seen any ID photo that looks more like the person than "probably the same taxonomic class"? Yet not only can you see everyone's photo, they're reasonably accurate (except Eliot's, which looks nothing like Sarah Chalke).
  • This troper works in a hospital. It's extremely important that all staff wear their ID badges at all times so they can gain access to certain areas of the hospital that random patients or visitors can't. Even a member of a child's family in a ward has to buzz in and tell the staff who they are, but staff can just swipe their cards and go past. Wearing it photo side out is also important so people can identify staff members: in my hospital, because it's an NHS hospital in the UK, every visitor has the right to know exactly who you are if you work there. Seriously, they hammer this stuff into you at induction - you have to have your ID badge on all the time.

• Why is Jordan always at the hospital? Why is Danni always at the hospital, when it's her sister who got their father's seat?
  • Jordan, in (I think) season five gets an additional job there that means she actually has to show up for more than eight days a year. Danni being gets a Lampshade Hanging from J.D ('okay, new rule: hospitals are for doctors and sick people only!') at one point. It's probably Rule of Funny.
  • Danni isn't "always" at the hospital. She was there for a handful of episodes while visiting her sister who was first having a baby, and then she was probably there to see JD. She can't "always" be at the hospital if she hasn't been on the show in, what, three or four years?
    • She was "always" at the hospital for the time period when she was involved with J.D.
      • Exactly, she went there because of JD and since her sister and the closest thing to a brother in law worked there she wasn't thrown out.
• One of the fun running gags of the series is JD daydreaming and then suddenly coming back to reality with phrase that ties into what he was dreaming about, but seems like an utter non-sequitur to everyone else. When the viewpoint switches to another character, as it does in some episodes, I was hoping we would be able to see JD as other people see him: zoning out for a few seconds then bursting out with a nonsensical comment. Of course in this case, we'd never even see what the daydream was, and would be left guessing as to what prompted the comment. However, this never happens, and instead the joke gets re-applied to whoever perspective that episode is being told from. We have Dr. Cox/Elliot/whoever daydreaming then coming out with a weird comment, while JD is never seeing having a daydream we're not privy to or making a spontaneous comment that we don't understand.
  • Not true. In 'Their Story' told from the perspectives of Jordan, the Todd, and Ted, they make this exact joke. The Todd even uses almost your exact words when he observes JD doing it.
    • JD's tendency to daydream has been made fun of a few times. At one point, he starts to have one of his little fantasies, then the camera cuts back to the girl he was talking to snapping her fingers at him, and Turk and Carla telling her "It's no good. Just leave him alone for a bit, he'll snap out of it." (paraphrased, of course), having a conversation, then JD saying something random and waking up.
    • There's also the episode where Elliot has JD on speaker phone the whole episode and at one point prompts him to daydream, except we can't see him because he's at home and thus only get the non-sequitur.
    • In another episode it shows that Turk knows that JD's daydreams about women at never very quick so he takes this opportunity to pull pranks on him.

• Being supremely talented lets you be weird; I get it. Kelso hates everyone but values their skills more because we all know deep down inside he wants to save lives. But damn, there's just some things they should be kicked out for. The Todd for being sexist, J.D. and Elliot for being neurotic, Kelso for being an insane narcissist...in short, they all got Flanderized.
  • None of their quirks makes them bad AT their jobs, though.

• The narration is supposed to be JD's diary, at least for the first part of the show (and probably at least until the one with Murray). In the Mist Stories, the Her Story, and the Their Story, what is the narration? It can't be their thoughts, because it?s in past tense.
  • It's the actors describing the events that happened on the show that week in character.
• How does the Janitor keep his job? He's a funny character, but as an employee he's horribly inefficient/lazy, and the things he does or threatens to do to others is past-the-borderline criminal. It's not like he's immune to being fired either; Maddox did that pretty easily. And the Janitor messed with Kelso a lot too, so I can't imagine why he tolerated him. He's like Cox, except he doesn't provide balance and probably look up a lot of the hospital's budget what with his crazy antics and all.
  • Dr Drew Pinski of Loveline fame regularly talks about this show (and House) and expresses his frustration with it, saying things like '..in the real world, all of these people would be before an Ethics committee.' I imagine it's just a case of needing the Mantra.
  • An assortment of characters have actually done things on-screen that would land them in jail. Dr Cox goes overboard on his revenge, the Janitor plays sadistic (and potentially fatal) pranks, Dr Kelso at the very least actively goads Ted toward suicide... Rule of Funny, people.
  • Well first of all, he's not just a Janitor, he's a Janitor who happens to be Almighty. Second, I always took the Janitor as sort of a satire on that one guy who constantly slacks off and screws up yet never seems to face any real consequences for it. We've all met guys like that, the Janitor is merely the literal personification of their collective existence.
  • As we saw in a couple of episodes, especially "His Story III", he spends a lot of time with patients. Granted, in doing so, he's not doing his job, but he is doing a job, and quite an important one.
  • If I recall correctly, he did get fired once. He came back anyway.
  • Well, the Janitor was supposed to be a figment of JD's imagination, so him being able to pull off those stunts was normal for him in season one since he was basically non-existant. It wouldn't have made much sense for his character to suddenly change because he's a real person.

• The Unreveal at the end of the series! I mean, there's this big tension about The Janitor's Real Name. When shortly after he gives the name Glen Matthews some guy comes up to him and calls him Tommy? I mean WTF? There better be a Word of God Confirmation soon because this is just annoying.
  • That was the whole point. The Janitor's name is a mystery, he lies about that just as much as he lies about everything else! We're not meant to know it, and we probably never will. But, in his own strange way he's being kind to JD by letting him think the mystery is solved, but still having the last laugh.
  • Due to the confirmation that he was in The Fugitive, This Troper still thinks the Janitor's name has to be Neil Flynn, and J.D. should have called him on it "because I watched the credits!".
    • He's a pathological liar! You can't trust anything he says, including The Fugitive thing.
      • But he was in the damn movie, how in the hell would he be able to fake that?
        • It doesn't have to be him. Neil Flynn could look like The Janitor. The Janitor could have changed his appearance to look just like Neil Flynn in The Fugitive. Neil Flynn and The Janitor could be brothers. The Janitor could be an evil clone of Neil Flynn. The Janitor is a pathological liar so any answer could work. Personally I'm for the clone theory.
          • Or the Easier Explanation. Actors tend not to use their given names, preferring stage names. Just ask 'The Duke' about being named Marion.
  • One of the theories behind this was that it was lampooning an earlier fandom theory that the Janitor was named Tommy because an extra in a (considerably) earlier episode seemed to say "Nice one, Tommy" in reference to a joke the Janitor made. I'm gonna go ahead and say that his name is Glen
  • I sort of doubt he has any particular chosen name as far as the writers are concerned. It's kind of like speculating on what The Faceless looks like. Incidentally, being in The Fugitive doesn't guarantee that he's Neil Flynn -- it could just be a 'coincidence' that the Janitor played the same character, with no Neil Flynn existing in the Scrubs universe in the same way that there's no Zach Braff, etc. via Celebrity Paradox.
  • Apparently Word of God has confirmed that his real name is Glen Matthews.
  • I took it somewhat differently. I believed that when the Janitor said Glen Matthews to JD, he was being honest because JD outright asked what his name was, and although Janitor is a complete psychopath, he has been shown to show respect at certain times, and I felt that this was one of those times. He could have told the random doctor that his name was Tommy as just another of his mind games, similar to the episode in which he posed as Nigel the British guy, Klaus the German, and Efram the stutterer to various different people around the hospital.
  • If it helps during season one episode commentaries Bill Lawrence said the Janitor's last name would be revealed in the final episode.

• I'm really confused, Turk wanted J.D. to hook up with his nanny because every girl J.D. hooks up with appears really ugly to Turk. So like, earlier, why was he having sex dreams of Elliot doing really kinky stuff to him?
  • A few other times it's shown he finds her attractive. One time saying "outside the hospital she is a slamming hottie" along with saying he likes the way she does the "hivy" when she's dancing.
  • Maybe his repulsion only arose part-way through the show? That, or Elliott's just that hot.
• After the episode in question aired, it struck me that Elliot's irrational hatred of red-haired people?which, I admit, is probably little more than yet another quirk in an already-extremely-quirky character?is belied by her previous relationship with the marine biologist Sean Kelly (read: an Irish-American played by Irish-American actor Scott Foley). I wonder if I'm the only person who caught that...
  • Scott Foley's hair is brown. Elliot hates redheads, not the Irish.
  • Judging by her brief stint with Colin Farrell in an episode I think its safe to say Elliot doesn't mind the Irish ;)
• Regarding the episode when the main four are essentially put on trial to decide whether they killed a patient:
  • 1. If J.D. and Turk left the building without having anyone officially covering for them they should be sued and fired. And have their medical licenses revoked. Since this was not brought up, I have to assume either the writers are really against doing the research (and they have a medical consultant on staff!) or they really really didn't care.
    • It's kinda referenced poorly that perhaps Turk was between shifts because he is at the Ostrich guy?s house when his shift supposedly starts. Maybe.
    • I'm pretty sure Elliot was the doctor who was meant to be covering for JD.
  • 2. The interns are the only ones around when the guy starts to die? Seriously? Isn't a dying patient instantly the responsibility of any of the on-call doctors that are present?
  • 3. How is this Carla's fault in the first place? If the entire nursing staff decided to ignore their duties to take part in the lottery on company time, than it's the entire nursing staff's problem, not just Carla.
    • Carla was the ringleader for the whole "let's blow off work and go watch the lottery because I personally want to win money" campaign?
    • Plus she's the head nurse
    • And Carla shooed away one of the interns who presumably came for help while they were watching the lottery.
  • 4. Even if you presume that J.D. is somehow at fault because it's "his" patient, how is Turk involved? As this is clearly taking place during the day, there have got to be extra surgeons around in case of emergencies.
    • Turk was the On-Call Surgeon who Carla told Keith to get.
      • You would still think that there would be more than one surgeon on call for the whole hospital though.
  • And another: how is Elliot to blame? A patient's wife duct tapes her to a wall.
    • Because she made out with her husband, confronted her about it and started a fight with her.
      • A misunderstanding, which she tried to clear up, but the wife didn't want to hear it and started a fight (watch the episode, she was already going to do something to Elliot before Elliot confronted her and made it worse).
  • What gets me is Cox being such an accusatory Jackass about it all to the main character. He was sitting right there, taking the piss out of the nurses for believing in the lottery. Why weren't you there when he coded Cox? Especially since everyone gets paged for a code in prior episodes.
• So let me get this straight; a girl buys a piece of land with J.D. even when they know they can't afford to build a house on it yet; then she says she's too young for a long-term relationship? Um, why did she encourage him to buy a piece of land again? Hasn't J.D. essentially ruined his credit for decades to come?
  • That is pretty crazy, but JD's credit would only be ruined if he is unable to pay for the land. Unless I missed an episode in which he fell behind in his payments or was foreclosed on, his credit is fine. Buying the land and making regular payments would actually improve his credit rating, not to mention providing an asset he can borrow against in future.
• Putting aside the question of whether J.D. ever technically asked the Janitor for his name, are you telling me that absolutely everyone in the hospital only refers to him as Janitor and nothing else? I'd think when Kelso was forced to praise him over the P.A. a real name would be used. Besides, wouldn't Carla have access to the personnel file so J.D. can look it up himself?
  • The Janitor falsified his personnel files. He says it at one point, "Feel free to read mine, of course it says my name is Captain Stinkwater, and I'm half chipmunk."
  • He's the Janitor, the only two people at the hospital that have ever been nice to him (besides his caretaking buddies) are Elliot and Redhaired Doctor, people don't care about him. Probably nobody ever asked him and it just became commonplace to call him Janitor

• So Kim lied about still being pregnant to not be tied down to J.D., then comes back and expects to be able to continue their relationship. Um, what? If you decide to lie about having a miscarriage, you have decided you don't want this guy in your life or the life of your kid. Ask him to help financially support the kid or babysit twice a week, lady, but the instant you lied you officially gave up any right you have to be with him romantically or domestically.
  • To quote Dr Cox "Pregnant women are one of the few people in society allowed to be crazy."
    • Which always annoyed me. Telling JD "You cant wear red while I'm pregnant" would be allowed crazy, telling him she miscarried his baby and breaking up with him, only to, months later, be all like "hey I didnt, I'm still pregnant" and wanting to be back with him is not allowed crazy by any definition.
  • What really bugged me was when JD tells her honestly that he doesn't want to be with her everyone turns on him like he's some kind of jerk. They even say that he should lie to spare her feelings because she's pregnant. Telling her that he wants to be with her only to say "yeah that was a lie" is the kind of thing that should be unforgivable. And of course he goes through with the lie only to have to tell her the truth while she's in labor.
  • Well I thought that it was because the emotional stress could had repercusions on the baby, it would had been awkward later on but then he could call her out on it that what she was asking was pretty selfish and jerkish of her.
• It's a small thing but it bugs me, in the SARS episode the whole thing is started because Kylie asked what was wrong with a patient, as a joke JD said SARS and shows her the patients chart but the episode before this was completely dedicated to how JD can't break the Doctor/Patient confidentiality thing. So, JD can't tell a girl that if she sleeps with her boyfriend she could get an STD but he can show her a patient?s chart?
  • Big difference between sharing information of person A when person B is very close to them and knows them outside of the hospital and talking about somebody that person B doesn't even know. Admittedly showing the chart is a big no-no but realistically there's not a hell of a lot Kylie would've been able to deduce about the guy's life from it (as opposed to telling a girl her boyfriend caught an STD off another girl). The chart shouldn't have that much personal info on it anyway given how easy it is to walk into a ward - the detailed files would probably be at the nurses? station. Not to mention JD was pretty much only thinking with his crotch at that stage.
  • Plus, technically JD didnt divulge the patients condition, he only guessed at that it might have been SARS, and as it turns out he guessed wrongly anyway.
• In "My Porcelain God", Elliot's first scene has her intubating a patient, and treating it as an entirely routine thing, to the point where she's able to do it without any problems while continuing a conversation with JD. Her next appearance has her completely unable to do the same procedure, with no explanation for why or when this happened. Was there some crucial scene that was deleted? And if there was, why cut the scene that explicitly sets up that subplot and keep the scene where she's shown doing it without any problems?
  • She screwed up the procedure and accidentally inserted the air tube into the patient's stomach, not his lungs. This destroys her confidence and renders her too scared to perform the procedure even though she has the skills to do so. She spends the rest of the episode trying to get her confidence back.
    • Well, it would have been nice if someone, anyone in the episode actually mentions that. I just saw the episode the other day and nobody ever brings this up.
      • Erm, it was mentioned. Explicitly. During the original scene. Cox comes in and has a big rant about Eliot blowing air into the stomach, not the lungs and how she failed a procedure she should have learnt within the first week. Go back and watch it again.'
    • That must have been edited out in the Comedy Central reruns, because I don't remember ever seeing that part of the scene at all. Every time I remember seeing the scene, it cuts from her talking to another scene, without Cox coming back into the scene.
    • Perhaps it's on the Season DVDs, but I was watching this episode on the CW today: Cox comes in and gives JD a little rant about being a "Best Girl" and then it cuts right to JD and Turk dancing in their tuxedos. There is however, a vestige of the missing scene: right before the cut, Cox looks offscreen with one of his pissed looks, towards where Elliot is intubating.
• That whole justification that JD had never seen Kim before because women with wedding rings are basically invisible to him bugs the crap out of me. Carla has a wedding ring. Laverne has a wedding ring. He must have had female patients with wedding rings. What was the point? Couldn't they just have Kim as freshly arriving at the hospital, rather than some nonsensical, lame joke?
  • No, because they had to make her a Mary Sue. Not only did the wedding ring thing bug me too, but also, the whole "She's been there for EVERYTHING" crap. I don't care what they say, Kim was NOT in the elevator with JD when he was singing "Kung Fu Fighting". That would mean she would have been there when the Janitor was about to tie JD up, which would mean that she should have tried to stop it. And, of course, the biggest Mary Sue thing they made her do: fixing the X-ray in the theme song.
    • Rule of Funny. As for the x-ray, they did that because the shows creators have received hundreds, if not thousands, of letters pointing it out and they thought it was a good way to acknowledge it without having to change the intro (which they had tried before to the fans outrage)
  • The one that bugged me most was putting her at Ben's funeral. Her with JD in the Elevator bugged me in that scene is one of my favourite parts of season one (and the bit just before it where Dr Cox is with his therapist). However, having her be at the funeral is like it's trying to ruin one of the iconic sad moments of the show!
  • You're taking it too literally. The wedding ring means that they aren't available to date, so they're invisible to someone looking for a date (portrayed as them being literally invisible for Rule of Funny since we know he can see married women). This still doesn't exactly excuse Kim's sudden appearance (though I kinda found her being added to existing scenes a bit humorous, so YMMV).
  • It meant that he never tried to start any kind of relationship with someone married, he saw her lots of times but never took enough care to at least notice or remember her face.

• Elliot leaving her stuff in a truck in the hospital parking lot. I have no pity for her. "Hey Elliot, if you don't have money to rent a storage unit, ask your friends for a loan, and even then take a box of your most precious belongings into the hospital with you." Seriously, even if there wasn't sufficient locker space I'm sure Laverne could've kept an eye on it for her. What's more, her life was a mess and everyone was saying she needed some time to gather herself; give her a few days off to find a new apartment and get her stuff behind a locked door again!
• J.D. does something immature, and Carla gets on his case about how he needs to grow up. Turk does something of either equal or greater stupidity, and she just shrugs and says that he's her man that she loves no matter what.
  • As seen in a episode of a later season, she doesn't mind their silly antics, it's when J.D.'s immaturity have an effect on his life of the lives of others, while Turk knows when it's time to roll up his sleeves as seen when he was worried about his income now that he has a child and Carla is thinking of being a full-time mom, how he always makes time to do filing and reports when at home, and how he takes surgeries very seriously.

• Carla being mad at Elliot for being a control freak in "My Rabbit". When nearly every episode has her trying to control everyone else. At least they didn't make it that Elliot was the one in the wrong at the end of the episode.
  • If Carla's a control freak herself it makes perfect sense to be annoyed if Elliot is being a control freak, because then Carla isn't in control herself.

• In the last few episodes when everybody is on Hawaii for the marriage of the Janitor Turk and Carla are fighting because he wants to have childish ocean sex and she always phones their daughters babysitter. Carla points out that he is a manchild and goes away being grumpy and in the end returns to the beach to have ocean sex without any explanation. WHUUUAAAAAAT?
  • Did you see it on one of the syndicated airings? I could've sworn there's at least a scene or two in there where someone tells Carla to lighten up, or shows her realizing that she's being a stick in the mud.
    • During the wedding scene, all the characters realise that Love Conquers All.

• Why exactly was everyone getting so mad at Kevin Casey? Yeah, he was showing them all up, but he wasn't doing it on purpose, he was just really good. JD, Cox, and Turk all show up at some point to chew him out, but what exactly was their argument gonna be? "Hey, you! Stop being such a good doctor and saving people's lives like that! You're making me look bad!" How did they not realize that if they did that, they'd all look like petty jerk-wads? And why was his OCD the only thing that made them decide not to tell him off?
  • No, they did realize that they would've looked like petty jerk-wads for telling him out because they saw him struggling with his OCD. They thought he was an extremely perfect "superdoc" that made his OCD work to his advantage, but after seeing him wash his hands for several minutes to no end, extremely frustrated that he can't let it go, they realized that he wasn't the perfect show-off they made him out to be and they were only jealous.
  • Well, I just don't get why it was seeing the OCD that they already knew about that made them reconsider, and not the fact that yelling at him was a really stupid idea in the first place. Yeah, we all get jealous of other people sometimes, but actually planning to tear a strip off of him for being a better doctor? Even if Kevin didn't have OCD, that'd still be pretty pathetic. Especially considering that he was actually a pretty nice guy. Besides, it wasn't like he was after their jobs or anything, he was just visiting. He'd have been gone in a few days anyway, so what difference did it make?
  • They knew about the OCD, but up until that scene it was treated the same as the other characters' little quirks, something they either work around or work with, and Casey had been noted earlier as using it to his advantage (compulsively rereading the books is great for studying, for example). I.e., that his OCD was not a big deal. That scene made them realize this wasn't just some quirk, this guy had a real problem, and suddenly they weren't going to be griping at someone who was better than them or annoying (which they do all the time), they were going to chew out a guy who was really suffering.
  • The point was the using it to his advantage part, they thought he was just showing off and was using that as an excuse, they thought his OCD wasn't that bad since it varies, plus they were just too hotheaded at the moment and when they saw that it was real and serious they stopped which also helped in cooling their heads since they were not just focus on their anger anymore. That's why they tell you to breathe and count to 10 to calm down.
  • Missing the point here! Question was: Why are they mad at him? Answer: Look at Turk in this episode! He could become a better surgeon, but he'd have to let Carla down. More training and learning equal in greater skills, however, everyone has to draw the line for themselves. This is maybe the best episode from an ethical point of view: Lives are at risk, yet you have to find the right balance. They are mad at Dr Kevin Casey because he reminds them that you can always do more. They feel guilty because they work hard and then there comes this guy who just works even harder. Every doctor wants to do the same thing in order to help the patients, but enough is enough. Just not for Dr Kevin Casey as he suffers from OCD.
    • No, I'd say the above tropers grasped the point of the episode quite well. The other characters were jealous of Casey's mad skillz. To rationalize their jealousy, they decided Casey was being a deliberate show off just to make them look bad. But when they saw him washing his hands over and over again, practically in tears as he tried to stop himself but couldn't, they realized how petty and selfish they were being. Suddenly Casey wasn't some arrogant asshole who shows people up just because he can, he was a guy with a serious problem who would trade all his mad skillz in an instant just to be normal and healthy, like they were.
• I have a major issue with the episode where the janitor installs a toilet on the roof. Dozens of hospital employees line up to use it, but what I want to know is did they wash their hands afterwards? There is clearly no sink on the roof, so even if they did they would obviously have to do so inside the building, meaning they would be walking around for at least a little while with unwashed hands. In a HOSPITAL, where cleanliness is considered important. Am I the only one who has a problem with this?
  • Like you said, in a hospital cleanliness is very important. Ergo, there's dozens of other places to wash your hands. Or, possibly, the Janitor put a bottle of Purell up there.
  • First of all, Rule of Funny. Second, are you sure you're not overstating the problem? There are bathrooms on every floor of every hospital. They just have to make sure not to touch anything in the short time it would take them to reach one.
• When Turk and Carla get married, the priest keeps telling them he'll have to cancel the wedding because another one is scheduled right after. When Turk goes to the wrong chapel and Carla calls, it shows her sitting by the altar in an empty chapel...so where's the other wedding?
  • I think it was that "he" had to go to another wedding.
    • Is that really church policy, though? I've never been married but I would think that priests wouldn't perform weddings at other chapels. I mean, wouldn't the other chapel have its own priest to perform weddings?
    • Perhaps it was an outdoor wedding, or one held at a hotel?
    • Also, yes, that is really church policy. At least, in some churches. Specifically, this troper grew up Catholic and we had our pastor as well as 4-5 other regular priests at any given time. However, many of those priests also served a few days a week at other churches. People getting married could request a specific priest to do the ceremony, but that may conflict with that priest's duties at another church. My grandmother's Methodist church also has a pastor who is the sole pastor at two churches. There's also the factor that some couples want to get married at a certain church but would like a pastor from a different church to perform the ceremony (if their church isn't big enough for all their guests, but they would like a priest they are familiar with, for example). So yes, it's totally legitimate to say that the priest had to go to another wedding at a different church or chapel.

• In one episode, Elliot wants to roleplay that she and Keith are having a baby. This freaks Keith out, and he says: "Alright, I'm putting on a third condom." This is troubling on multiple levels:
  • 1. Using more than one condom actually increases the risk that the condom will break. Using three pretty much guarantees it. Those condoms are going to break. This is something that any doctor would know. Are we supposed to think Keith and Elliot are both that stupid? Or are we supposed to think that only Keith is really that stupid and that Elliot is keeping quiet in some grand attempt to get pregnant?
    • Rule of Funny and Viewers are Morons. I for one had no idea that multiple condoms increase the chances that they will break. Most viewers probably felt the same. Regardless, I doubt anyone will be trying this any time soon.
    • Fridge Horror: What if a viewer, like yourself, didn't know that multiple condoms dramaticallt increases the chances of breaking and, thinking it would help lower the risk, actually tries it?
    • If you're relying solely on a sitcom joke to provide guidance about sex, that's more your problem than the show's.
  • 2. By adding a third condom, the dialog implies that wearing two condoms is the norm for Keith. Is Keith really REALLY that stupid? Is Elliot? Or is Elliot really so desperate for a baby that she would risk sleeping with a guy who has effectively only ever had unprotected sex?
    • It doesn't imply that Keith regularly wears multiple condoms. It implies that he's already freaked out by Elliot's behavior, which was what caused him to put on two condoms in the first place. He later decided to put on a third just to be safe. (Not correct condom usage, I know, but that's not the point of the joke.)
• When the cast is at the Bahamas, JD's big declaration of love is that he loves her more than anything else in the world. Even Turk...erm, what about his son?
  • It's kind of a given that most people love their children more than anything else, and it's pretty much unconditional in most cases. Saying he loved her more than Turk was his way of saying that out of the people he actively chose to love, he loved her most.

• Something that has always bothered this troper about Dr. Cox's character is his tendency to talk shit about Sacred Heart. He constantly refers to the hospital as a "dump" and seems to have very little respect for it. In one episode he was named the best doctor in the area, so why doesn't he go work at a better hospital? And if he hates it so much there, why does he take the Chief of Medicine position?
  • He also constantly berates JD and calls him the worst doctor he's ever seen, only to admit in private and when pushed that JD is in fact one of the best he's ever seen. Dr. Cox complains about and berates everyone and everything, including his ex-wife who he's clearly actually in love with.
  • Perhaps it's not that Sacred Heart is a lousy hospital but Cox's standards are just way too high. Maybe in his eyes, every hospital is a dump because they don't match up to his discriminating standards.
  • Leading from that, maybe he's just dispondant that the hospital doesn't have the staff/beds/equipment it SHOULD have to help everybody, as financially and realistically impossible as it is.
  • Or, alternatively, he calls it a dump so that it looks like The Great And Powerful Dr. Cox is what's keeping the whole thing together.
• They named a character Gooch. That just doesn't make sense. Did they not know what gooch is slang for?
  • I knew a guy named that in High School.
  • If you're going to throw out any name or reference that someone could see as an innuendo, you're not going to be left with many names.
  • But those were names first. I'll admit I only know the term from jackass so I don't know if it's been around longer than that, but to me it's still weird. There's a difference between Peter and Dick and then you thrown in Gooch, Pussy and Schlong.
• In season 6 (again...)one episode features Turk being freaked out that Carla is considering not going back to work, so she can stay home with the baby(the same baby she soon after admitts to having homicidal thoughts about and leaves alone with a small child , but lets not get into that). Turk becomes obsessed with money, so much so that he wont even buy J.D. some cotton candy and starts doing some pretty shady back-alley doctoring deals, but then literally THE NEXT EPISODE, Turk is fighting with Carla wanting her to stay at home with the baby instead of coming back to work like SHE wants. WHAT!? JUST WHAT!?!?!
  • At the start of that episode, weren't they crunching the numbers for babysitter vs stay at home? Turk may have just gone from being worried about losing that extra paycheck, but then realised the other costs involved with babysitters etc.
• The annoying girl from Mad TV dies of a cocaine overdose. Dr. Cox decides to transplant these cocaine-infused organs into other people. The people die, not of the effects of cocaine on an already weakened body, but of RABIES, and we are told there is NO WAY Dr. Cox could have known about this. Do they just grab any old body and swap the organs out? How could she possibly have matched three random patients on the several factors that must match to keep the body from utterly rejecting an organ? I realize they were just trying to set up Cox's Heroic BSOD, but come on, they didn't even TRY to make sense.
  • A cocaine overdoes doesn't "infuse" all of someone's organs with the drug. That's just not how drugs work. A cocaine overdose in particular would kill you by either respiratory failure, stroke, cerebral hemorrhage, or heart-failure caused by an elevated heart rate because of what the drug does to a user's brain chemistry. Not because your organs are "infused" with the stuff.
    This, like other Scrubs cases, was based on a real event where, yes, someone died of rabies and that person's organs went into others before they realized it. Keeping them all in the same hospital was a conceit made by the episode to show the effects more directly.
    • Right, the cocaine teleports into your brain, it doesn't circulate through the same blood that flows through your entire body. And I hope the doctors in the real-life case were sued for malpractice; at least dying of a cocaine overdose gives a reasonable explanation for why they didn't test for rabies. If someone died of an unknown illness, why would you NOT find out what it was before you transplanted their organs?
    • Actually, yes. As I understand it, snorting cocaine through your nose does more or less put it directly into your brain. Cocaine isn't some poison that's going to infect and contaminate every organ it touches, damaging it irreparably. It's a chemical that has fairly specific effects on the body--primarily, the brain. Note how that article mentions nothing at all about other organs except how they're affected indirectly by the brain's activity. Given how accurate this show usually is, which is to say, very accurate, I'm inclined to believe they would know something about the expected effects of a cocaine overdose on a body.
    • They didn't have time to find out exactly what she died from because those other people were in desperate need of those organs.
      • Actually it was more like, she's a suicidal person, they discover high amounts of cocaine in her (don't remember them saying she dies from cocaine but ok) AND they needed the organs, not to mention that like J.D. said a rabies test with absolute no basis is not done (she probably DID die of an overdose and that's why J.D. and Cox didn't noticed any symptoms of rabies in the time they spend with her)
  • They cover this in the episode - two of the patients are "circling the drain" (dying) so it's ok to take the risk. The reason Dr. Cox gets so upset is that one of the patients who died was healthy enough to have waited a few more months.
• During Season 3, Elliot's recurring boyfriend Sean had gone to New Zealand for the purpose of doing scientific research. In one episode while he was there, Elliot called him, ostensibly during the day for her. Note that Scrubs is set in an indeterminate city in Southern California; the actual hospital where the show was shot is in Los Angeles. Her call apparently came in to Sean during what was ostensibly the middle of the night (or the wee hours of the morning) for him. When watching, I simply accepted that premise at face value, figuring that since New Zealand is almost literally on the other side of the planet, the time difference ought to be obscene. Had a close friend of mine not gone to New Zealand in real life, I doubt that I’d ever have realized that that scene made no sense whatsoever. Even assuming the worst-case scenario (New Zealand on daylight savings time and the United States not), the difference between what time it would be in California and what time it would be in New Zealand is 5 hours. New Zealand would be 19 hours ahead of California in that scenario; that essentially means that they’re 5 hours behind but a day ahead (thanks very fucking much, International Date Line). Depending on what time of the year it was supposed to be (and I’m not sure what that was), the difference between what time it would be in Cali and what time it would be in NZ could be 3, 4, or 5 hours. In each case, NZ would be a day ahead. Elliot would be hard-pressed to call Sean during her workday and reach him in the middle of his night, unless maybe she called him bright-and-fucking-early, first thing in the morning.
  • Sheldon is that you?
• Is it just me or does the show put too much emphasis on Elliot being so pitiful and pathetic in Season 2? This may just be because this troper doesn't like Elliot that much, but it's like they made it completely impossible for Elliot to handle any situation until the start of Season 3.
  • It's a set up for her Character Development later on. Yes, Elliot started as a neurotic mess who hardly achieved anything, but she grew, and she changed. Granted she became Flanderized to the point of being a bitch in later seasons, but even that was improved on eventually.
• So Carla has the nursing staff spy on Turk during Season 8 and 9 and he's ok with this? He doesn't try and fight it? Does Carla expect him to cheat on her or something?
  • I don't think they are actively spying on Turk in the same way one might hire a PI to spy on someone. It's heavily suggested throughout the show that the nursing staff is fairly gossipy. Nurse Roberts would regularly "spy" on people to obtain juicy gossip. Turk refers to them as spies when they're really just giant gossips who are close to his wife.
• Carla and Turk take ONE home pregnancy test and announce the news to the entire hospital staff. As far as we can tell, no blood test is done (and Turk certainly can't get a blood test before he and JD decide to surprise Carla with the news). Does this not seem incredibly irresponsible for three people who work in the medical profession?
  • It's a pregnancy test, how is that irresponsible? if it turns out that it was a false positive what would had been the harm? that would had made more sense if they weren't actively trying to have a baby.
    • The risk of miscarriage and other complications are far less after 12 weeks - as medical workers would know - and many couples wait at least that amount of time to announce their news to family, let alone co-workers. Recanting a false positive is one thing, but having your entire workplace know you miscarried is probably extremely uncomfortable and stressful.
    • Uncomfortable, stressful (and only in the event of miscarriage happening), yes, not irresponsible, specially since the risk of miscarriage in the first 12 weeks "when you know you're pregnant" is already low. Even more so when both parents are hospital workers and thus can monitor the fetus more closely and more resourfully.
    • Some people just get very excited to tell people and don't wait the traditional 3 months. Of course, if a miscarriage happens, then they have to go and "untell" everybody. The rate of miscarriage decreases once the heart develops (as seen by high-level ultrasound at 7 weeks). However, being a hospital worker won't decrease your chance of miscarriage before then. You can monitor all you want, but the very young embryo is pretty much on its own to live or die. About the only thing that can affect the outcome is progesterone supplements (and that's only if mom has low natural progesterone).
• From the episode where Turk was sick of helping the short doctor because it was hurting his back, why didn't he just get a chair? Then he could sit down and assist. It's not like he was doing anything critical anyway.
  • I'm pretty sure surgeons are supposed to stand at all times while they work. Having a chair in the operating room increases the chance of someone tripping over it.